Arab awakening: a new challenge for Palestinian-Israeli conflict

The wind of political change blew for the first time in the Arab world in a small country called Tunisia in 2010. It all started with Mohamed Bouazizi's immolation and for exactly that reason the Jasmine revolution was also given the name Intifada of Sidi Bouzid, Bouazizi's city. But was it really the first expression of Arab uprisings? According to the Ambassador of Palestine in Spain, Musa Amer Odeh, in his exclusive interview with Touraj Jafarieh for Open Society, the Arab Spring started in Palestine in 1987. The first Intifada or "war of the stones" started as a pacific action, such as refusal to pay taxes and boycotts of Israeli products, against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Although most of the Palestinians, were unarmed there were young people throwing stones to israeli troops, an action that gave enough evidence to some people to characterize the Intifada as violent.

The end of the first intifada was completed with the Oslo Agreement or Declaration of Principles in 1993 and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. Although there was an interim period of five years in order to negotiate a final agreement for the conflict resolution,the agreement, outlining a resolution for peace, was never really respected. But the reason for its failure lied in the fact that the agreement did not mention the recognition of a Palestinian state neither it decided over the refugees destiny, israeli settlements or Jerusalem status.

After almost twenty years since the First Intifada of Palestinians, the political changes, that came as a surprise to most, occurred, more profoundly in the North of Africa with the fall of dictators alongside with mere reforms in countries like Bahrein or Marruecos. The transitional period, in the North Africa, is marked by ambivalence due to the islamists' role but the power of the civil society cannot be challenged; a civil society that takes advantage of every political development to show his approve or disapprove in the Arab streets. Will emerging democratic systems be the opportunity that Palestinians wait for more than a half century for theirs voices to be listened? Musa Amer Odeh, mentions that "democracies promote our cause and that Arab people are in favor of the Palestinian cause". The representation of the civil society by new legitimate governments could put pressure on the Israeli government to change his attitude.

Any negotiation undertaken for the resolution of the conflict should be part of a regional agreement. All Arab countries should participate in the agreement with Israel. Palestinian people will need to compromise a lot, whereas options like the implementation of resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly are unrealistic. In addition, the two-state solution everyday seems to fade more away because of increasing Israeli settlement activities.

Musa Amer Odeh insists that the international community has the obligation to defend people's right to improve their conditions. He adds that negotiations are easier when the parts implied do not change and the peace process does not start from the beginning. Who could play a crucial role as mediator? Even though that has always been the exclusive privilege of United States, maybe the time has come for the European Union to be essentially involved. The Euro-Arab dialogue, that started in 1973 but was frozen due to a series of crisis in the Middle East can offer the right framework. It was based on the equality of the european and arab part, was composed by the General Committee and represented by the two parties. Due to the Dublin Compromise, the PLO had been able to take part. The difficulty of political cooperation in the EU should be overcome and hard work must be done by EU to regain the trust of the Arab countries. The EU should start immediately by being engaged with a wide range of politics in the democratization process of the region, in order to carve a path to end the palestinian-israeli conflict as soon as possible.

Director

Konstantina Kostami is co-founder of Open Society and researcher on Democratization and Development in the Arab/Muslim world at the Complutense University of Madrid.

Education

Ph.D. in Political Science at Complutense University of Madrid, M.Sc. in International politics at the Complutense University of Madrid, B.Sc. in International and European Economic Studies at the Athens University of Economics and Business

Languages

English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Greek

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